


The Wish Book

by Lochinvar



Series: Talismen [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Acts of Kindness, BAMF Bobby Singer, BAMF Dean Winchester, BAMF Sam Winchester, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Love, Children, Christmas Fluff, Dean Winchester Takes Care of Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester in Love, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Happy Winchesters (Supernatural), John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kid Fic, Kindness, Magic, No Sex, Pre-Canon, Protective Bobby Singer, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Takes Care of Dean Winchester, Sigils, Slice of Life, Talismen, Terminal Illnesses, Young Dean Winchester, Young Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-23 15:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13193532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/pseuds/Lochinvar
Summary: John dumps the boys at a motel in small-town Minnesota at the Christmas season. Angels appear in the form of the owners, along with Bobby and Pastor Jim, who ensure the boys have the best Christmas ever.





	1. Welcome to Good Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/gifts), [Morgan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan/gifts), [InTheGreySpaces](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheGreySpaces/gifts).



> This first chapter describes the setting; John and the boys show up in Chapter Two.
> 
> Dedicated to the three writers I first encountered here at A03 three years ago. Not just inspirations, but also good people.

Harmony, Minnesota – December 1992

\----- 

Margaret and Bill Burkee’s _Good Faith Motel and Diner_ , a Harmony, Minnesota landmark, sheltered the poorer families that flocked to the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, even though it meant an hour-long commute.

Had seen at least a couple of doctors back home before they made the trek to Mayo. Maybe experienced the roller coast of hope and failure more than once.

Margaret and Bill managed the motel and diner as if the guests were favorite cousins come to visit. The small-town lodging charged half as much as the hotels near the hospital complex.

Best job in the world, the couple said to each other every day. A home away from home for the families while medical personnel, caretakers, and patients hunted the invisible monsters that possessed cell and tissue. Battling diseases for which there weren’t easy diagnoses or treatments.

 _Specializing in tertiary care_ said the brochures.

 _Last hope_ was what the families said to each other in private.

\-----

The sprawling motel was a giant, one-story, U-shaped building; the indoor hallway accessed the rooms, which all faced the parking lot. Each room had its own outer door and two parking spots, and most rooms connected through shared doors with deadbolts on both sides. Could create suites to house bigger families.

The lobby and check-in counter sat in the center of the building, facing east. It was the unofficial gathering place for the guests, with sprung-seat, upholstered armchairs and couches, card tables and folding chairs, an ATM machine, some vending machines for sodas and snacks, and a color television, usually playing sports, weather, or old movies, with captions. Margaret deemed the newscasts too depressing.

\-----

The diner, a long, rectangular building, was attached to the west side, with its own entrance and parking lot. It was a big room to allow for tables set farther apart than in a typical diner, in order to accommodate visitors using canes and walkers, wheelchairs, and oxygen tanks. And no one who needed help was singled out and made to feel less that welcome. Staff members received basic training, like how to set the brakes on a wheel chair and the proper way to place a table setting for a blind guest eating alone with their guide dog.

The Burkees promised and delivered a bare bones but clean lodging with comfy mattresses, plenty of hot water, and thick walls for privacy, a welcome perk for families with children in chronic pain and adults plagued by nightmares.

Wide doors accommodated wheelchairs and walkers; every room had a double-sink bathroom with guardrails for shower and tub. Each also was equipped with a tiny kitchenette, outfitted with a small bar sink, a two-burner electric stovetop, microwave, a waist-high refrigerator, and a shopping bag’s worth of cheap cutlery, dishes, pans, and dish towels, plus dishwashing liquid and plastic scrubbers.  
  
There was a clothes rack and a small dresser, but most of the families lived out of their suitcases. Never knew when they would have to leave.

And every room could manage a hospital bed, if that is what the family needed. A home health care supply company in Rochester guaranteed delivery of equipment rental in two hours. The local pharmacy could take care of the rest. And, the multi-county nonprofit hospice organization was there for back up; they had access to drugs no one else did.

The joke was that, being mostly Midwesterners, the guests would leave the place cleaner than how they found it; the maids often would discover a spotless room with barely used linens folded neatly at the foot of each stripped-down mattress and the trash tied up and disposed of in garbage bags the families had packed for the trip.

There would be a generic pack of popcorn, waiting and ready for the microwave, a quick treat for hungry travelers who had driven straight through from Lincoln or Hannibal or Fargo. Made the place smelled comforting right away.

The rooms were warm during the frigid winters; fans circulated air through the big, screened windows in the hot, humid summers.

\-----

Regional tornadoes, rumored to be sentient and fueled by demonic forces, were a real and constant danger, even outside of the usual peak spring and summer seasons. A storm shelter in the basement of the motel, accessible by stairs and a wide, winding ramp underneath the main office, was big enough to accommodate those who might not make it to the combined police and fire station buildings two blocks away.

Ironically, it was the 1883 Rochester tornado, an estimated F5, which was the catalyst for the creation of the Mayo Clinic, impacting hundreds of thousands of lives for the better.

Bill Burkee’s mother and father built the motel and diner as a thank-you to God and all of his Angels after Bill’s older sister Barbara survived the 1952 polio epidemic with no more than a limp. Margaret Quinn had shown up with her family 20 years later, while her mother sought treatment for a rare kidney cancer. When her family moved back to Dubuque, Iowa, Margaret stayed and married Bill.

Once upon a time Bill dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with the stereotypical long arms and legs of a movie ballplayer. In high school, he was an extraordinarily speedy shortstop with an uncanny eye, and major league teams had scouted him at the state finals, including his guilty passion, the Chicago Cubs. He was offered a tryout with their AAA team, the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines, a mere 200 miles from home. But, the motel was expanding, and Bill felt duty-bound to stay.

He took business, hospitality, and culinary classes at an Iowa community college just over the border, earned a two-year associate’s degree, and took over running the Good Faith Diner at the ripe age of 20.

Registered guests could get free donuts and coffee 24/7. The menu was geared to family comfort food with holiday specials and the ability to accommodate most picky diets. No extra charge for room service, also 24/7.

Like his skills at baseball, he was a natural.

Three kids later, and he still referred to Margaret as his bride. She was tall, with blue-green eyes and a red cast to her light brown hair, which she wore short and curly. Her classic Irish good looks fit in well with Bill’s extended Swedish family of blondes with grey and blue eyes.

As he liked to say, the Vikings visited. A lot.

And it didn’t hurt that she had been a star pitcher on her high school’s girl softball team.

The Burkees hired locals to clean, cook, wait on tables, and run the night shifts at both enterprises. Eventually helped two generations of neighbors through high school and college. The couple worked 14-hour days, surrounded by friends and family, and could not have been happier.

They both had been brought up in religious families, but shared an ecumenical attitude towards denominations. Settled on the Methodists. Liked the rationality and the emphasis on good works.

\-----

It was a week before the long-anticipated Christmas break would close the Fillmore Central School District until after New Year’s. The next big storm was days away, shuffling down from Canada, and locals reveled in frigid but sunny weather.

After school, young siblings and cousins built monster snow creatures in front yards. Fathers and uncles took off from work to fish through a foot of clear ice.

Mothers, aunts, and older female cousins were clustered in the season’s kitchen of choice, preparing for the next round of holiday feasts. The culture of most families required that the womenfolk share responsibilities and that the festivities move from house to house.

But there always was an older sister with the bigger dining room and freezer and oven. She would volunteer each year reluctantly, griping a bit, but it was all for show. She wanted to protect her reputation. Regardless of what they officially said at her funeral, she hoped to be remembered as the heart of her family, symbolized by a sideboard creaking under the weight of a clove-studded ham, potato casseroles, creamed spinach, and brown sugar custard pies.

\-----

Visitors and locals were rubbing shoulders in Amish-run stores on Main Street, taking advantage of the good weather to shop, hunting for handcrafted toys, jams, and quilts. If the journey to Mayo was a success, the lucky families wanted a celebratory memento to take home, maybe an ornament to hang on their Christmas tree each year to remind them of God’s mercy.

Some of the motel’s rooms already displayed smaller trees, both natural and artificial, on tabletops and desks and stuck in corners. If their children were with them, the adults wanted to make sure that everyone had a wrapped present, even as the attention was focused on the family member fading away in a hospital bed up in Rochester, surrounded by beeping and blinking machines.

The younger children, often accompanied by older siblings, would shyly approach the front desk. They would ask to borrow scissors and tape to wrap gifts they had purchased with hoarded allowances at Harmony stores or which had been brought from home at the urging of parents, who assured them that they would be celebrating the holiday on the road.

Santa would find them, never fear.

Margaret had a free supply of gift-wrap and office supplies to share. And guest received a 20% discount at local stores; just had to show their room key if they needed to find last-minute gifts when their stays turned out to be longer than planned.

\-----

The Burkee family kept the season. They decorated the motel lobby and diner; each displayed a big fir tree covered with old-fashioned ornaments, mostly made by their children and young relatives, with contributions from their guests.

Bill complained every year that they could keep the buildings warm with the lights Margaret strung everywhere and anywhere, including down the motel’s long hallways. But he was the one who insisted on checking for burnt and broken bulbs in the long strands and replacing them with new and better, staying up late to get the job done.

Anything to make the kids happy.


	2. Meet the Winchesters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The WInchesters arrive.

The man in the leather jacket had checked in around noon. Paid cash. Two young boys with him, polite and serious. Overdue for a visit to the barber. The siblings looked about seven and eleven.

The older one had his arm around his little brother, holding him close. Had green eyes and freckles over fair skin, golden-brown hair with a hint of red. The younger boy stared with slanted hazel eyes through unkempt bangs at Margaret, skin like rich cream and darker hair, as if he came from a more exotic bloodline.

The father said he was a car mechanic, hunting for work on the road. Was on his way to take his boys to stay with family in Montana. He was charming, but his eyes were red-rimmed; his hair had too much silver for the age on his driver’s license. Winchester. John Winchester it said. The boys were Dean and little Sammy.

He booked the cheapest they had. One room, two twins, for three days.

Drove a black muscle car with Kansas license plates. Margaret could hear the roar of the engine in the cold, still air a half-mile away. Something about sound waves bouncing off hard-packed snow banks.

Judging from the car’s pristine condition he knew his business as a mechanic, but his sleep-deprived eyes, premature gray hair, and the broken blood vessels that flushed his cheeks spoke of an issue with liquor, which probably made long-term employment problematic. Wife gone? Dead? Hard to know. Margaret would never ask, but she liked to guess and was a good listener.

Margaret made a note to bring a plate of donuts to the room as a holiday welcome gift, a small charity that wouldn’t poke at their pride.

She went to check their room herself the first morning, a small pyramid of frosted cake donuts on top of the cleaning cart. The boys were making up the bed they shared, military-style, with hospital corners. Dean was taking a special interest in fluffing up the pillows and folding and tucking the sheet under them.

The room was empty except for two small, army-green duffel bags, zipped and buckled up tight, sitting on the other twin bed. No toys, no snacks, none of the usual clutter that accompanied a family on the road. And there was no sign of any decorations or gifts.

On the kitchen sink were a couple of cans of tomato soup, a jar of peanut butter scraped clean, a box of generic breakfast cereal, and a half-eaten loaf of white bread, still in its plastic wrapper.

The father had left for the day to job-hunt; the boys were on their own. The television was on; a local station was playing Christmas movies and cartoons nonstop. On a small table were a couple of schoolbooks, which turned out to be high-school freshman algebra and a junior-level introduction to the history of the British Isles. A pen, pencil, eraser, and a pad of paper were all neatly arranged as if waiting for the first day of school.

She wondered how many days per month or even per year that the boys sat in an actual classroom.

The brothers both stared at the plate of donuts. The older boy’s hands were clenched and trembling, as if he was holding back from grabbing the plate and running away with it.

In the corner of the room slouched a couple of 20-pound bags of rock salt, not an uncommon sight in the rural upper Midwest. The older boy apologized; they spilt some on the floor and had not had time to clean it up.

Both boys were dressed too lightly for winter weather.

Although the room was warm, Margaret turned the thermostat up a notch.

“I felt a little draft in here. No extra charge for heat,” she said, smiling at the boys.

“I’ll bring some extra blankets back to the room. No extra charge.”

\-----

The woman knew the signs.

Little boys grow fast. You buy clothing a little too big, revealing collarbones and sagging over hips, folded cuffs at wrist and ankles. Too quickly everything is too small, wrists and ankles now poking out from tight sleeves and pants legs. Nothing ever sits right, except for a few weeks between too big and too little.

The clothes aren’t worn long enough to wear out, so they look new even when they are outgrown. In big families, they are boxed up for the next in line or shared with family and neighbors.

But if you don’t have money or family, and you don’t live anywhere long enough to make friends with your neighbors, you pick through front yard sales and church thrift stores. Clothes that should be looking new are frayed at the hems, faded fast from a 24-hour laundromat’s dryers with one setting–high–and caustic, generic detergent. T-shirts and pajamas are used and discarded a half dozen times before you rescue them from the free bin. Always smelling of bleach.

Little ones learn to dress in layers to hide the ugliness of poverty and compensate for fabric worn thin. Camouflage against young bullies and the critical eyes of self-righteous adults, looking for fault.

Margaret eyed the boys, guessing sizes. Would check with her church and a few friends. Find warm clothing for both of them. Hard to navigate a poor family’s sense of honor, but she’d learned not to make a fuss. Would treat the transaction as if the father was doing her a favor taking the sweaters off her hands. Invent a family that dropped off some pants and shirts and a jacket or two, just the size of the brothers, who were both, it turned out, older than they looked. More like nine and 13. Missed meals will do that. Can stunt your growth and, at the same time, make you old beyond your years.

Can’t ever find shoes that quite fit, so in the summer you buy tennis shoes, too big, and layer your feet with thick, cheap sports socks. They rub and wear out fast, and the shoes are hard to run in.

The boys go barefoot when they can.

Finding decent, used boots is easier, like that pair, brand-new, forgotten in the bottom of the closet in a motel room, three towns back.

Haircuts? Near active military bases an honorably discharged Marine can find barbers that offer discounts to veterans. Kids are free. But in sparsely populated rural areas, even though haircuts are cheap, they still cost, so Dad trims his sons’ hair with a pair of old scissors he sharpens on the same whetstone he uses for his hunting knives. When he remembers.

Margaret can do something about the hair. Fake a free coupon for the local barbershop. Not the first time.

(Once, in Nebraska, a sympathetic principal winced at the teasing she heard floating through her window at recess and asked the brothers to stay after school. She sat them down on the edge of her desk, one at a time, and snipped away with the professional gear she kept in the bottom drawer–worked her way through teacher’s college as a shampoo girl at her aunt’s beauty parlor, weekends and evenings. Not the first time she had cut a child’s hair. Neat and stylish.

One less reason to be taunted. One less scar on the heart.

She also kept a file drawer full of combs and brushes, scarves and mittens and hats. Brand-new. Nice. A basket of apples in the corner and those little packages of crackers and peanut butter for empty stomachs.

No husband or kids. Lived with her aunt until death took that sweet lady; eventually moved herself to an assisted living community nearby.

When she retired, grateful former students filled the consolidated district’s giant high school auditorium. Some drove all day and brought their families. Applauding until their hands hurt, cheering through a half-dozen congratulatory speeches. Many still wearing the scarves she gave.

The brothers wore theirs through high school and beyond.)


	3. Good Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John leaves the boys alone. Margaret steps in.

The second morning, the father came to the motel office, frantic. He had to go, he said. Family emergency. Could not bring his children.

“They are good boys,” he said.

The older one, Dean, was used to looking after the younger boy, Sammy. They would be no trouble.

He gave Margaret enough money to cover two weeks’ rent on the room.

“They have cash for food.”

He gave her a number to call, an uncle in South Dakota, if there were problems. He would be back in three days, tops. And then he was out the door and gone, before she could respond, roaring away in the black Impala.

\-----

In families cursed with bad prognoses, kids grow up too fast. They behave. They are good. It’s their job, what they can do for their parents. For their suffering brother or sister or beloved relative or family friend. For the dying.

Be good.

Margaret and Bill were accustomed to young children being left in the care of older siblings at the motel while the adults drove up to Rochester to deal with the grim realities of doctors and tests and very bad news. Over the years the Burkees had evolved an off-the-legal-radar, informal partnership with social services and the police department, keeping an eye out for signs that intervention was required.

Usually, the issues were simple.

Food? No problem. The diner was an endless source of chicken fingers, hot dogs, scrambled eggs, fish sticks, pudding, potato salad, egg salad, tuna salad, and milk shakes. And steamed veggies with butter and salads with homemade dressing.

Bill shamelessly would bribe other people’s children with dessert–cookies and pie washed down with big glasses of milk–if they ate their vegetables and greens first.

Safety? Older siblings watched over the younger ones, adopting strangers into temporary tribes that bonded quickly over shared, unspoken tragedy.

There was a park and playground conveniently next to the nearby police and fire stations. The children would walk over in protective packs and in good weather play touch football and freeze tag and all of the old group games, like Red Rover and a gentle form of Dodge Ball. Catch and Keep Away and Hopscotch and Double Dutch and Touch Football and a sandlot version of Soft Pitch Softball. The older kids played Horse with an old basketball and a battered net-less hoop, nailed against a wooden backstop, less than regulation height.

The older watchdogs in the groups shared a refined instinct for making sure those with the biggest emotional wounds won, regardless of their age. The unwritten rules dictated that the six-year-old with the dying mother will run the ball from one end of the field to the other and score, while the rest of the players trot besides her, cheering her on.

A grandfatherly dispatcher would watch from out the front window of the police station. During the day, nurses at local schools took turns being on call for playground or motel duty, to step in to take care of scraped knees or comfort a child overcome with missing their parents, maybe needing a warm hug from a friendly adult. Evenings and weekends a volunteer from the firehouse would be available, bringing a first aid kit and a handful of junior firefighter badges to parcel out to wide-eyed children.

Most of the time, the parents came back to the motel by nightfall, unless there was a crisis or unplanned event, such an emergency surgery or sudden turn for the worse. Arrangements could be made, with the Burkees' endless supply of responsible young adults available to babysit. Happy to sleep on a couch or nap on a spare bed for a night. Happy to tuck in sleepy kids and read them a story. But rarely were the adults gone for more than a day.

\-----

So after John drove away, Bill and Margaret conferred about the brothers. Then Margaret went down the hallway to the Winchesters’ room and knocked on the door, expertly balancing with one hand a plastic tray with a tribute of gingerbread cookies on a dinner plate and two large glasses of milk. (A skill she perfected after years of waiting tables.)

Dean cracked the door a sliver, the chain still hooked. When he saw it was the nice woman who ran the motel, he unlatched the chain, opened the door, and stepped back.

He looked just like a young fox she accidentally cornered in the garage one crisp, fall evening. Curious, brave, and ready to dash out the door if she held her mouth the wrong way.

Margaret, moving slowly, put the cookies and milk on the table where Sammy was memorizing the succession of the English kings and queens from his history textbook. His eyes grew wide. She nodded, and he took a cookie from the plate and held it out to Dean. He waited for his brother to take it, before he took a cookie for himself. Then he reached over with both hands, carefully lifted up one of the glasses of milk and gave it to Dean before he took the other glass for himself.

The woman closed her eyes against the sudden burn of tears. Took a breath. Opened them and watched the boys take their first bites and sips.

She sat down on the chair next to where a methodical Sammy was dunking and devouring the cookies, emptying the plate with help from his older brother. She told the boys that she had talked to their father and understood the situation. She respected that Dean and Sammy needed their privacy, but explained that she had a legal and ethical responsibility as well.

(She used adult words, hopefully demonstrating to the older brother that she took his caretaker role seriously.)

So, she would check in on them during the day, and Dean was to call in the evening, when he was getting Sammy ready for bed. And, he was to call in the morning when they woke up.

She also told him that she wanted him to take their meals at the diner, suspecting he was going to try to stretch the money his father left with the remnants of the canned soup, white bread, and cereal. When he hesitated, she realized that regardless of what was said, the father had left them with inadequate funds.

“Your father paid for your meals when he paid for the room,” she lied without hesitation. “No charge. Anything off the menu.”

It was as if Dean had been holding his breath all this time, and suddenly, someone turned on the oxygen so he could inhale again.

“Sammy likes veggies,” he said.

“Good. I do, too,” said Margaret.

Dean made a face for effect.

“You look more like a burger and fries man,” she said, and Dean grinned a little boy grin.

Sammy listened and took another cookie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was about ten years old, my father became very ill and had to be hospitalized in isolation for weeks. My older sister was off to college, and there often was no one around to watch me. So, my mother would put me in the car with snacks and books, lock it up, and leave while she went to spend time with my father. (The good old days when benign neglect did not always mean a call to the cops.)
> 
> The hospital was in a poorer old neighborhood in inner-city Chicago. Pretty soon I was leaving my hidey-hole in our 1956 Chevy Bel Air and playing games with really friendly children who lived nearby. They knew about hard times and were sympathetic. I shared my snacks, and we played Freeze Tag and Hopscotch and various games built around a fascination with marbles and jacks. 
> 
> My mom figured out what was going on. Her response was to leave me with more snacks for my new friends.


	4. Uncle Bobby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncle Bobby to the rescue

At first, Dean and Sammy stayed in their room or left only to eat at the diner, which was attached to the motel through an inside doorway. (They didn’t yet have the warm clothing needed to deal with playing outside in Minnesota winter weather. Margaret was working on that. Her usual sources were busy with the holidays, so she had decided to buy the basics out of her own pocket and pretend they were left by a grateful family.)

Dean seemed very protective of his younger brother and focused on his needs, but when they were at the diner, Dean talked to the other children who came up to their table to say hello. (It was that kind of Midwestern family diner, sort of like attending a family reunion made up of the relatives you actually wanted to see.)

Through the grapevine, and some well-tuned eavesdropping, Margaret and Bill learned that their mother was dead, killed in a fire. The boys always were on the road with their father, John, except when they stayed with family friends. He, John, was some kind of hero or had been in a war. That part was not clear.

After three days, there was no word from their father, Margaret called the number he left. A gruff man answered the phone “Singer Salvage” and took about a minute to shift from _suspicious old coot_ to _close family and glad to hear from you. Bobby Singer, just call me Bobby._

“Yes, John is a good father, with troubles, but he loves those boys and they love him. Never hurts them, but times have been hard. He must have trusted you, ma’am, to leave the boys alone at the motel. Dean is a wonder to be sure, and little Sammy, well, did you notice that the schoolbooks they are carrying are for high school? High school! And yes, they are good good boys. Like sons to me. Nope, no kids of my own. Widower. If things had been different…

“John must be tied up in that family emergency. Maybe his wife’s side…the Campbells? Nope, don’t know. Of course, I could come get them. Today…Only a few hours away from Sioux Falls, just a straight shot on I-90…maybe four hours, can come pick them up, but…that dang storm front shook loose from North Dakota and is heading south and east; pretty much closed down everything from Minot to Madison, did you hear? Moving steady, and on its way to the Twin Cities. Would catch me before I got to Harmony.”

(If it were a real emergency, Bobby had enough mojo at hand to get around the gates closing down the entrances to the interstate and roar past the Smokies, even if meant tying his truck to a sled’s worth of black dogs and weres. Or so he said later to Pastor Jim, over cups of Irish coffee.)

“So, I can wire some money. Oh, John paid for the lodging, and they have good eats? No need to call Children’s Services, or the police, right, then, given the season and weather, right? I could make it if that was your call; rather risk the drive then have them locked up for their own good or staying with strangers. Have been there myself, you know.

“You sound like good Christian folks. The boys are lucky. The boys can call me collect. You tell them that Uncle Bobby says, call collect today.

“Oh, and Christmas. It’s Christmas. Living alone, you tend to lose track. I can wire you money for gifts. Anything, I mean anything you get those boys will make them light up.

“Well, anything that can fit in the back seat of a car, better yet in a duffel bag. They are pretty old for their age, maybe you noticed. Good boys, responsible. Sammy is crazy about books, like those books that they read in high school or college for classes on math and English and history, and Dean likes magazines about hunting and soldiering. Their daddy was in the Marines; that might tell you something. They worship him.

“Dean loves cars and Batman. Sammy loves dogs. And they both like toy soldiers and anything that has to do with heroes, like knights and cowboys. But no monsters; Sammy scares easily.

“Hey, I can wire some money to the nearest bank. I’ll do that right now. Will drive into town today; my bank will take care of it. How do you spell Burkee? What’s the name of your bank? The boys aren’t used to Christmas; John lost the taste for it when his wife died.

“Thanks for calling. I’ll check in tomorrow. And, if you want to win Dean over, pie will do it."

And Uncle Bobby hung up.

(Note: If you look at a map to check on the math and the distance between Harmony and Sioux Falls, you’ll notice that Blue Earth, Minnesota, falls right dag nab in the middle. Where is Pastor Jim, you might ask? And why didn’t John tell Margaret to call him instead of Bobby? Two hours closer to Harmony.

Well, the good man was in the Holy Land, shepherding a group of his congregants on a special Christmas trip to Israel. And, while he was in the neighborhood, picking up some artifacts that could be unlocked and accessed only on the Winter Solstice.

Otherwise, the boys would be snug in the four-poster bed on the second floor of the rectory, drinking cocoa and stuffing their faces from the ginormous supply of cookies that Jim’s flock baked for him every year. The extras were shared with grateful police officers, firefighters, nurses, snowplow operators, teachers, city jail prisoners, long haul truck drivers…you get the picture.)

Margaret was satisfied, and sure enough, when she turned on the news that storm did look wicked. The boys were safe and warm and fed, and the police and Children’s Services folk had more pressing emergencies to deal with this time of the year.

Local professionals trusted Margaret’s judgment with good reason, so unofficially the boys were in her care until either the father showed up, which could be at any moment, or Uncle Bobby arrived after the storm. No need to call in a caseworker or bother a judge. Not yet, anyhow.

She went back to their room after having loaded a tray with a plate of cut-up ham sandwiches (no crusts), two big cups of hot chicken rice soup, and two slices of pumpkin pie. Snacks for growing boys.

At the little table Sammy was studying his precious textbooks. Dean was slouched in the chair, watching a football game.

They both were glad to see her, glad to see the food.

(“You can eat whatever you want at the diner, you know. Whenever you want. Don’t have to wait for mealtime. Really. Like I told you, paid for by your daddy and came with the room.”)

They lit up when they heard she had talked to Uncle Bobby, and Sammy practically danced around the room when he heard that Bobby was going to come get them if their father didn’t return right away.

(Margaret noticed that neither boy seemed surprised that their father was missing in action. No phone number. No calls. Not surprised that they were excited about a visit with a favorite uncle, who, she guessed, would be much more likely to spoil them than the man with the sad eyes.)

Uncle Bobby was sort of their uncle (Margaret pretended not to hear that; would just complicate things with the authorities), but he was the best. She learned that he owned a salvage yard and made the best chili and let Dean help him fix the cars and had a big house and they got to sleep in the attic room that was HUGE with a big bed they shared. Sammy chimed in, breathless, about the stray dogs Uncle Bobby rescued that Sammy could brush and wash and feed and walk and play with.

And more books than the public library.

They knew better than to mention the guns and the strange herbs and the glass jars filled with pickled monsters and the explosives and the black candles, the target practice, the basic lessons in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, the memorization of warding sigils, and what the bags of salt were for, and why Dean had a silver knife and a gun under his pillow. Why Sammy was right to be afraid of monsters.

And how Dean had participated in his first official Salt-and Burn two years before. Well, he watched.

And what really killed their mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked me why my stories of the boys' lives have so much to do with food. Well, if you lived for years, not knowing where your next meal is coming from, and you are Dean, trying to keep your baby brother safe and well, food becomes important. 
> 
> In memory of those of my relatives who had hungry childhoods.


	5. Sigils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret's fears are confirmed, and Dean discovered white magic at the motel.

The advantage of being a good customer at a small-town bank was personal service. The bank’s vice-president called; a hundred-dollar money order, less the transfer fee, was ready to be picked up; they could cash it for her on the spot. She threw on a warm coat and walked to the bank. The wind had picked up. Like most folks who live in storm country, Margaret had a good weather eye and automatically looked up to the north, where she could see a giant cloudbank rising from the horizon.

Margaret was pleased that Uncle Bobby had kept his word; meant a very good Christmas for the boys. She found herself wishing that the father did not return, just yet. She returned to the motel, put the money in her office, and worked a shift at the front desk.

She figured that Dean knew the truth about Santa, but she wasn’t sure about Sammy. So, she called the room and asked Dean if he would come talk to her in the lobby. Something about the bill. She knew he would not want to worry Sammy. She waited in her office.

\-----

There were three rooms off from the lobby. Margaret’s office, which held a messy desk, a couple of big, gray metal file cabinets, and a closet. Then there was the utility storeroom for housekeeping, which led to the shared laundry and trash workspace for the motel and diner.

And, finally, another smaller office that sheltered the bookkeeper/purchasing agent, Oscar Lund, a savant when it came to the accounting skills needed to keep the motel and diner afloat. Good faith indeed. If not an Adept or White Witch, surely a genius at making a dime stretch to a dollar.

Rumor had it that he had been the CFO of an international agribusiness headquartered in Ames, Iowa, back when Bill’s parents ran Good Faith. A wunderkind who made it to the C-suite before the age of 30.

Despite the best efforts of Mayo’s best, his wife died.

He wandered back down to Harmony, paid for another four days on a room with one queen bed, and drank himself into a stupor with a bottle of Jack Daniels. When he came to, he drank again. And again. Hoping for an endless sleep. Decided, with his orderly mind, that he could drink himself to death before his rental time ran out.

When he woke up a week later, he was in clean pajamas between freshly laundered sheets, and a cold breakfast of cheese Danish and fruit salad were waiting for him on a folding table. And an insulated pot of strong, hot coffee and a large cup. The clothes he brought with him were hung up or folded. His wife’s make-up kit and her clothing–the clothes she would have worn home–were still neatly packed in her expensive luggage. On the table next to the breakfast tray were his wallet and the keys to his expensive car, the one he had driven from Ames with his failing wife in the front seat. Not a penny had been touched.

A pile of pink message slips were sitting next to his wallet. From the hospital and the funeral parlor. From relatives.

And from his office, where he learned that his absence during his wife’s illness could no longer be tolerated. Call now. That was dated two days ago.

When he came to settle the bill, he asked to meet privately with Bill’s father Nils.

He thanked him for his kindness. He said he had to make some phone calls, and he needed the room for a few more days. To make arrangements. As he talked he looked around the little office, and saw the _piles_ of bills. _Plural._ The ominous envelopes stamped _Last Notice._ The big thick envelope, big enough to hold a magazine, almost a package, mailed from the office of a Minneapolis law firm.

Oscar returned to his room and made his calls, including the one to his now ex-employer, and returned to the motel office.

“I can help,” the ex-CFO said to Nils. He couldn’t bring back his wife, but he could do something for these nice people.

He never left. Another life saved.

\-----

Dean left his brother reading his algebra book for the tenth time while the educational tv station played some documentary on beavers. Left him with strict instructions, on pain of death or worse, not to open up the door to anyone except him, Bobby, or Dad. Or, he added after a pause, Mrs. Burkee, Margaret, or her husband Bill. Got it?

Sammy nodded, absorbed in his book, filling in the answers to the test questions in his head, watching the patterns in the quadratic equations dance and weave.

(The first thing Margaret planned to do when she got the boys into warm clothes was to walk them to the public library, which she already knew was the younger brother’s version of Heaven.)

Dean walked down the hallway to the lobby. The decorations were corny, but he liked them. Liked the pretty paper stars and snowflakes, which looked like something out of old pictures from Bobby’s books, where artists had drawn the images of the prettiest of sigils, the ones that were painted and hung in the palaces where wizards lived, once upon a time.

There were so many. Maybe if he asked nice, Margaret would give him one to hook over the rear view mirror in the Impala. For protection. Something he could hang from a lamp on Sammy’s side of the bed where they slept, wherever they went. Even for Sammy, he did not feel right stealing one from her. Maybe stealing would hurt the magic. He better just ask.

He met her in the lobby. She left one of her young employees to run the front desk, and they went back into her small, crowded office and closed the door.

Margaret imagined several scenarios while preparing for her meeting with Dean, ranging from his being speechless with embarrassment about the Christmas money from Uncle Bobby, with shame for their poverty, to his shouting for joy and immediately making a list of presents for his baby brother, with a few bashful suggestions for himself.

What she did not expect was for the boy in front of her to straighten up, shoulders back, and morph into a thirteen-year-old man. He held out his hand and asked her to turn over their money, as if she had been holding it for him as a favor.

“This…this is money your uncle sent, so that you and Sammy could have a Christmas,” she said.

“We don’t need Christmas,” said Dean. “We don’t want it. I can feed us for days, even weeks with that money, after we leave here. Buy things for Sammy on the road. Keep him safe, the next time Dad has to leave us.”

Dean was looking desperate. If Margaret didn’t know better she would think the stalwart boy in front of her was on the verge of a panic attack.

“All right,” she said. “It’s your money.”

She opened the drawer to her desk, crammed with papers and office supplies, pulled out the bank envelope, and handed it to the boy. His hands were shaking, but as soon as he was holding the envelope, he began to calm down.

Without self-consciousness, he opened it in front of her and counted the bills.

“There was a fee,” she said with a touch of nervousness. “The receipt is inside the envelope. A transfer fee between the banks. That’s why it isn’t exactly one hundred.”

He put the bills and the receipt back in the envelope and slid it into the front pocket of his jeans.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I still would like you and Sammy to have Christmas,” she said. “I assume that Sammy still believes in Santa?”

“No,” said Dean. “He stopped believing last year.”

“Okay,” said Margaret. “Let’s you and me put something together, for the both of you. Nothing fancy.”

She could see he was going to protest.

“And nothing that requires any of your Uncle Bobby’s money. But we can use the diner kitchen to make some treats, and you’ll get a Christmas dinner, a nice one, just like everyone else. And maybe my husband and I might buy something for Sammy, let me do that, okay?”

She held up her hand, as if to silence his unspoken objections.

“And if you decide to use part of Uncle Bobby’s money for gifts or food, well, that’s all up to you.”

“For Sammy,” said Dean.

“You are a nice lady,” he added.

He turned to leave and turned back. His face was a mask.

“My dad didn’t pay for our meals in the diner, did he? That was a lie. He left me ten dollars to feed us for two weeks. I bet Bobby figured it out. Didn’t want to worry you or have you turn us over to the CPS.”

She noticed he stopped the pretense and was no longer calling the gruff man in South Dakota his uncle.

The boy stated it without emotion, as if commenting on the weather.

Margaret knew he was warning her. If a caseworker showed up with the police, Dean would run and take Sammy with him. It wouldn’t be the first time, she guessed.

“I understand,” she said. “If your father doesn’t come back…(Dean shrugged)…Uncle Bobby will be here after the storm blows through and the interstate opens up.” (She decided it was best to keep calling Mr. Singer “Uncle”.)

Dean nodded, said his thanks again, and left.

\-----

It was five days to Christmas. Because it was a loan, Dean was okay with them borrowing from the Burkee family’s vast store of holiday decorations to “do” up their room. Sammy was delighted, in part because Dean kind of got into it, too. They hammered nails into walls without a word of rebuke and hung garlands of fake greenery, illuminated with tiny lights that blinked on and off through the night. Hung the silver and iron sigils buried in their duffel bags within the strands of light. Hid the salt lines on the windowsills where they were less likely to be noticed.

Put a small artificial tree in a corner and smothered it with lights and ornaments.

Dean asked after the folded origami and lace cut ornaments, Margaret readily agreed to share them. Opened the box where the best were stored and told their story.

Many years before an immigrant Hungarian Jewish family, living in rural North Dakota, stayed three weeks at the motel while the Mayo doctors battled the father’s terminal heart disease in Rochester at the clinic; bought him another two years’ teaching high school math in their local school district.

He had been a physicist in the old county, but it was easier to qualify to teach in the secondary schools in the United States than to try to be reinstated as a college professor. A grateful farming community was eager to have the kind, brilliant man move to their town and coach their children into good grades and a life, if they chose, outside of the wheat fields.

The older daughter, Judith, was a gifted high school senior with a full scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago awaiting her in the fall. The younger girl, Magda, still in grade school, always had her nose in a book. Love fairy tales. Neither of them spoke unless spoken to.

Both girls had thick dark hair that curled below their shoulders, creamy skin, and what used to be called “snapping black” eyes. Half the boys (and some of the girls) staying at the motel were in love with Judith by the end of the first week.

Margaret had set up two card tables and a half-dozen folding chairs in the lobby of the motel. Supplied Judith with stacks of construction and tissue paper, yarn, glitter, paint, transparent tape, and white glue.

“You can be our artist-in-residence,” Margaret told the dark-haired teenager.

Judith folded an ark’s worth of origami animals and snipped a blizzard’s worth of elaborate snowflakes and stars, with the help of her younger sister and any children (and more than a few adults) who wandered by. Hundreds went home with families to trailer parks in rural Texas and high-rise apartments in New York City and became heirlooms to cherish for a generation or more.

[She incorporated the Shield of David, the six-pointed star, into many of her designs, unwittingly providing effective warding for hundreds of civilian homes as well as the motel and diner.]

Before her family returned home, Judith gifted Margaret with that big box filled with exquisite swans and reindeer and stars and angels and snowflakes, embellished with delicate tracings of painted feathers and fur and jewels, and carefully dusted with patterns of silver and gold glitter. They immediately became part of the Burkee family’s holiday tradition, along with the Nativity scene in front of the building by the front door and the modest toy train set-up that endlessly looped in the big picture window of the diner.

\-----

The box still contained dozens of ornaments that had never been used. Dean handled them reverently, and took a dozen for the room, with repeated assurances to Margaret that he would return them all.

He was going to offer to pay for one before they left. She was determined to hide the full dozen in his duffle bag.

By the time they were done, the room felt like the inside of Santa’s workshop, from the green felt-appliqued coverlets on the beds to the waterfall of lights over the window, woven between nails so they hung tightly at perfect intervals, a design that Sammy had imagined and Dean built.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Judith, the talented artist, is modeled after my older sister, who created a similar galaxy of handmade ornaments for our holiday trees.


	6. Heart's Desires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sammy and Den impress their new friends, and Margaret figures out one way to give the boys a Merry Christmas.

Margaret remembered a motel guest, a retired wildlife biologist on a birding tour of the Mississippi Flyway. She had told him that she was worried about the deer that would creep into town after a big storm, looking for handouts.

The scientist warned her not to succumb to their beautiful, sad faces.

“They will do fine,” he said.

“For wild things, food is like heroin. Addictive and almost impossible to resist.”

The same was true for the brothers and all the lost children of the world. As tough and self-sufficient as Dean tried to be, he melted when confronted with the daily miracles of pancakes and chicken stew with dumplings and cheeseburgers and creamed corn in unending supply. And pie.

The first and second shift cooks were let in on the boy’s passion and competed to produce a special treat him for him each day, for breakfast and lunch and dinner. They raided the deep freeze for homegrown raspberries and rhubarb, whipped egg whites for meringues, sliced tart Granny Smiths, and pulled canned cherries and peaches from the pantry.

Dean tried to stay stoic, tried to resist the temptation of feeling happy and safe and cared for. But, then they stirred crushed peppermint candies into milk chocolate custard, cradled in a graham cracker crust, and swirled whipped cream on top in peaked waves, and Dean surrendered.

He asked and received seconds and thirds on everything, and he and Sammy took cookies and crackers and tangerines and apples and carrots and celery sticks and little bowls of ranch dressing back to their room for between-meal snacks.

Margaret thought of the squirrels she fed, despite the advice of the biologist, when snow covered the ground. A momma squirrel would stuff a big peanut in her mouth to carry back to her nest in the hollowed out branch of an ancient silver maple near the Burkee's house. But she first would hover over the splay of nuts scattered on top of a crust of snow, drop the one in her mouth for one that was even bigger, and repeat until she got the best one.

The only difference between the brothers and the squirrels was that Margaret made sure that Dean and Sammy didn’t have to choose. They could have it all.

For boys like Dean and Sammy, Margaret knew the parental fable of snacks satiating their appetites for regular meals was a myth. Nothing could spoil their hunger for a healthy lunch of turkey sandwiches with tomato slices and mayo. Buttered peas and, yes, once again, pie for dessert.

Dean could not remember a time since his mother had died that if he were hungry on the road, he could eat as much as he wanted and not worry about depriving Sammy. He loved watching Sammy, a poster boy for picky eating, devour local delicacies like yellow split pea soup with ham, pork chops with apple sauce, and grilled walleye fillets, a mild-flavored fish that tasted pretty good drowned in butter with a browned-crumb topping.

\-----

And those extra pants and sweaters that Margaret found for them, the ones that looked like new, could not be turned down, since, given the chance, the boys’ bodies responded almost instantly to regular meals of very good food. Which mean that even in a few days, their old clothes were beginning to shrink–too short and too tight to wear much longer.

Dean accepted the gifts for Sammy’s sake, pretending to believe the well-intended lies and because Sammy insisted that his older brother have warm clothing that fit.

And they joined the pack and played outside, returning to the motel rosy-cheeked and breathless. Observant adults reported that the boys were exceptional good at sports, competing with children much older.

Dean easily fell into the role of protector with the younger children and impressed his peers with his speed and strength.  
  
But what the children were buzzing about one day was little Sammy. A trio of townie boys, not bad guys but a little bored and looking for something to do, decided to hassle the strangers on the playground. And like most predators, they looked for the weakest link, the little boy standing by himself, watching the bigger boys playing catch with a borrowed football, his eyes glued on the standout with the arm like a biblical slingshot.

For once, Dean was distracted, and his Sammy alarm system was turned off, because he felt safe. Felt that Sammy was safe. So didn’t see the three boys approach his baby brother.

And one of them shoved Sammy in the shoulder. Didn’t hurt him, but just enough to throw him off balance. Meant to intimidate, to show off to the other children. Shoved him again.

And Sammy had a choice. Either keep his head down and not draw attention to himself, a cardinal rule when your family is off the grid, or be, for once, a badass Winchester.

Foreshadowing a time when Sam Winchester had the strength and speed of a NFL running back, little Sammy grabbed the boy’s wrist, twisted it with two hands, tucked, and rolled, pulling the bigger boy with him as he fell and let mass and momentum flip the townie to the ground.

Sammy somersaulted and was back on his feet before his attacker could draw a breath.

Just like in sparring practice with his big brother, where Dean let himself be manhandled over and over until the moves to deal with a bigger assailant were automatic.

Dean was racing across the field, but before he could get to Sammy, the rest of the pack was on the scene, led by the bigger children. Two of the older girls already were yelling at the townies while a phalanx of kids had surrounded Sammy, willing to do whatever to protect the boy, who, it seemed, did not need protecting.

It was the first time in his life that Dean experienced people other than his extended Hunter family stepping up to protect Sammy. The boy on the ground caught his breath and was helped up by his friends. They fled the scene before one of the police officers from the nearby station ambled over to assess the damage, cup of coffee in hand. An experienced father with three boys, he could see all was well and returned to the warmth of the lobby.

Dean held back, watching as their new friends swarmed his brother, babbling their praise at his moves. Sammy glowed, for once not shy about being the center of attention. Dean was a little jealous, a little uneasy, but mostly proud. Sammy looked for him through the crowd of children, and when he saw Dean, his big brother responded with a thumb’s up and a smile.

\-----

But what about holiday gifts? Margaret understood that the reality of their lives dictated that presents be small and mobile. She wondered how frequently the brothers stayed with Bobby and if special presents could be stored at his house in South Dakota.

She puzzled a solution, knowing that, in a very real way, being happy was making Dean miserable. The boy knew the food and warm clothes and safety for Sammy and him could and would vanish. He didn’t want to enjoy the money if it meant lowering his guard. His whole life was about protecting his brother.

Margaret did not want to trigger an anxiety attack that would push Dean to disappear with his brother, especially seeing that the blizzard was on their doorstep, their father still was incommunicado, and Bobby could not venture east to Harmony until the interstate was open.

It was then that Margaret remembered _The Wish Book_.

It was an activity the grade school she attended in Dubuque would employ at the holiday season, from an era when the big mail-order catalogs like those from Sears Roebuck, J. C. Penney, and Montgomery Ward still ruled working class folks’ versions of the American Dream.

 _The Wish Book_ game began with each child receiving his or her own copy of one of those mail-order catalogs. Margaret’s schools used the Sears version, thicker by far than their hometown Yellow Pages.

The game was designed to help children communicate with Santa Claus and parental Santa Helpers. You looked through the toy section of the catalog, overwhelming to six-year-old Margaret, and picked which toys you wanted. You cut out the pictures with blunt-nosed scissors and, with the help of your teacher, pinned them on the classroom bulletin board, where Santa would see them as he filled his toy bags for Christmas Eve starting in early December. And by his Helpers, when they visited for Parents’ Night the following week.

Margaret’s only choice was a stuffed striped tiger. She was six years old but no fool when it came to her family’s finances or what Santa was likely to bring to the trailer park doublewide where they lived. (Prefab housing was the formal name.)

However, when the tiger, aka Fluffy, appeared under the family Christmas tree, she believed in Santa for two more years.

\-----

The local post office was stuck with a stack of undeliverable catalogs from J.C. Penney, and the Harmony postmaster was happy to break several federal laws by giving two of them to Margaret, rather than adding them to their overflowing dumpster.

Since neither boy believed in Santa, Margaret decided that she was going to change the game. Made it for Sammy, which meant that Dean would go along to please his brother.

Margaret already had played the “Anything For Sammy” card to get Dean to accept loans of books for his brother and the gift of warm hats and gloves. Sammy would not wear them unless Dean wore his as well.

Margaret swore that the younger boy winked at her after he successfully nagged his older brother into putting on a Green Bay Packers knit cap and matching gloves before their leaving the motel room for what turned out to be an awesome snowball fight in the parking lot.

And Dean accompanied Sammy and Bill Burkee to the local animal shelter so Sammy could bring a gift of dog bones from the diner’s kitchen. They played with a litter of mongrel puppies under their flop-eared mama’s watchful eye. Mostly, Sammy played, and Dean watched Sammy be happy.

\-----

Margaret stood in the Winchesters’ room, hands on her hips, her brow furrowed in concentration. The boys were eating breakfast, and although Margaret respected their need for privacy, she needed to snoop in order to properly set up the _Wish Book_ display board.

Their room was smothered in holiday decorations from the motel’s stockpile. A small tree strung with ornaments and lights sat in a corner.

Hung in front of the window and on the doors were those curious metal ornaments that looked like they had been hammered into shape on the kind of portable anvil that farriers carry with them to shoe horses in the field. They even looked like they were made from the same kind of iron ore as were old-school shoes–the kind that hung on farmyard fences and in antique stores that catered to tourists.

The symbols reminded her of the hex signs she saw painted on barns in Pennsylvania during a childhood vacation trip to see historical monuments, meaning her father, a Civil War buff, was set on visiting Gettysburg and dragged the family with him.

Margaret scanned the room. The wall space between the twin beds was empty. Perfect. She went back to her office, her plan in place.

The brothers returned from yet another play session in the brisk cold. Fresh snow was falling, and there had been a fort to build.

Margaret found a large rectangle of corrugated cardboard in her bottomless “craft” closet in her office, which was filled with half-finished and abandoned art projects, and jars of festive green, red, and white poster paint and a handful of cheap brushes, plus a stack of newspapers. She also gathered a collection of colored pencils, crayons, library paste, and sturdy sheets of construction paper and placed them on one of the trays from the diner. Borrowed a luggage cart to move her goodies to the room in one trip.

Once the boys were out of their new winter coats and boots, she sat down with the catalogs at the little table and explained the _Wish Book_ game.

Something told Margaret that both Winchester brothers would be insulted with an offer of “baby scissors”, so she brought two pair of scrapbook scissors. (Good instincts on her part, even though she had never seen Sammy’s skill with a blade. Did not know about the knife under Dean’s pillow. Or the gun.)

They were to look through the books and cut out photos of things they would wish for in the coming year. They could wish for themselves, each other, or anyone they wanted.

Then, they could paste the photos onto their canvas­, pointing to the large cardboard currently leaning up against the wall.

Turned out both boys liked to draw. (Hunter training included practice at sketching monsters in the field, something that the boys were careful not to mention.) She told them that anything they could not find in the books they could draw.

Sammy looked eager. He opened his catalog and began to methodically scan each page before proceeding, scissors in hand.  
  
Dean just stared at his copy.

“Maybe you can help Sammy,” said Margaret, resisting the impulse to put her arm around the older boy's shoulder. Wanted to comfort him even though she knew she would never know the source of his sadness.

“Come on, De,” said Sammy. “It’ll be fun.”  
  
Dean shrugged. He flipped through the pages quickly and came to the tool section.

“Suppose could find something for Baby,” he muttered. Seeing the look of surprise on Margaret’s face, he smiled.  
  
“That’s our car, the Impala. Best car in the world.”

Left the supplies in the room. Asked Dean to paint the cardboard, with Sammy’s help, to make a pretty display for their work.

The boys were good soldiers; liked it when adults gave them jobs to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wildlife biologist quote came from an interview I had with a state wildlife official years ago for an article. Makes sense. And yes, I feed our fat fat squirrels and birds every day.
> 
> It was pretty exciting to cut out the photo of the toy tiger and place it on the bulletin board in our Chicago classroom, with my name printed underneath, and have the same tiger appear under our tree at Christmas. A big wow when one is six years old.
> 
> I am guessing that Sammy use his notorious puppy eyes to manipulate Dean for Dean's welfare more than Chuck ever let on in his stories


	7. The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sammy start working on their Wish Book display, and the motel becomes an oasis from the storm.

The storm hit hard, and the lobby and diner were packed.

Many of the adults staying at the motel couldn’t make it back from Rochester and the clinic by nightfall, so there was more than the usual number of children stranded without their parents and older relatives.

Extra helpers were recruited, teenage locals who thought nothing of snowshoeing from their houses to the motel to take on a shift of babysitting in exchange for minimum wage and unlimited cookies from the diner’s spacious oven.

Rather than demanding silence and obedience from the motel-bound children, the young staff organized relay races in the curved hallways and gymnastics in the basement tornado shelter–anything to work off their extra energy.

Dean had showed up at the diner once that first day of the blizzard to order a tray of food to take back to the room for dinner. Roast chicken and sides of vegetables and a small pumpkin pie to split with Sammy. A pitcher of milk. He carefully fisted the tray, watching the pitcher and glasses sway and clink as he walked back to the room. Otherwise, Margaret didn’t see either boy since she had dropped off the catalogs.

Per their agreement, Dean called the front desk when he was readying Sammy for bed. Margaret knocked, and Dean unlocked the door. He had supervised his brother’s bath, washed his hair, poured the sleepy boy into freshly laundered pajamas, and made sure he had an extra blanket.

The cardboard still was unpainted and blank, but the table was covered with photos cut out from the catalogs. There were a couple of crude drawings, as if the boys were having a contest to see who could sketch the silliest likenesses of each other in super-hero costumes. Dean was Batman, as tall as a spindly skyscraper with exaggerated muscles. Sammy was a wizard with a long beard, a wand, and a dog in a superhero cape.

Margaret picked up the tray of dirty dishes and wished both boys a good night.

\-----

The storm raged for two more days. Margaret had her share of children to feed and comfort as well as anxious adults who could not get back up to Rochester to check on the progress of loved ones; calling the clinic meant being put on what Bill called “infinity hold”.

The motel was full. But state police dropped off a handful of clueless travelers who had ignored the warnings of broadcast radio and television, including some experienced truckers who should have known better. They squeezed around the snow gates, inevitably got stuck on the nearby interstate, and were rescued by adventurous heroes driving snowplows and four-wheel drives. The refugees had nothing but they could carry in the pockets of their coats; they needed food, a shower, and a change of clothes.

Bill and his helpers broke out the cots and emergency kits in the basement shelter, and the community stepped up with donations of clothing and toiletries.

Twice a day stranded librarians and teachers held story hours in the diner, handed out books, and coached older students worried about keeping up with their AP homework. Families shared toys.

One of the parents owned a fancy restaurant in Minneapolis. Angela Potente had started as a line cook in a Kenosha, Wisconsin diner, gone off to culinary school in France, and came back to the US to build a restaurant that won national awards for its nouvelle Midwestern cuisine. Kept busy in the diner while her heart ached for her husband. They couldn’t cure his bone cancer, she told Margaret, and so they were working on pain control to make his last weeks easier.

She volunteered for the busy breakfast shift and then baked French pastries and ran a class in candy making. No time to feel sorry for herself.

\-----

The boys mostly kept to themselves; the crowded common areas were overwhelming for Sammy, and Dean had reverted to protection mode. The older boy picked up their meals and snacks, but otherwise they stayed in their room except for a daily run for a new stack of books from the little lending library, which had been set up in a corner of the diner.

Sammy devoured everything, which meant the usual donated detritus typical of older, established motels–from ancient _Reader’s Digest Condensed Books_ and _National Geographic_ magazines to collections of poetry and discarded textbooks.

Margaret called Bobby, who said that he was watching the weather and as soon as the state police gave the go-ahead, he would be on the road.

Dean asked Margaret if he could use her office phone to call Bobby privately. Collect. A long call, 30 minutes. He left the office smiling.

No word from their father. Must be hunkered down some place.

When Margaret checked on the boys at night, she could see that they had been working on the _Wish Book_ display. But Sammy threw a pillowcase over the cardboard when she came in.

“A surprise,” he said.

And then it was Christmas Eve morning and the sun came out. The road opened up between Harmony and Rochester, and the motel emptied as families rushed back up to the clinic, packing their cars and trucks with other people’s children who had not seen their parents in days.

In the organized chaos of the cleanup at the motel, Margaret slipped away to check on Dean and Sammy, who she had come to think of as “her boys”. Her own children, all away at good colleges, had not yet made it back home because of the storm. Even though she usually was surrounded by a platoon of kids, from babies to high school seniors, they weren’t her kids.

But the Winchester boys were special.

She knocked, and, after the sound of rustling papers Dean let her in. A bath towel covered the poster board, and the piles of drawings and cutouts on the table were obscured with wrapping paper. Both boys were grinning.

Bobby had called the motel around 9 am. He was on his way. Should be there around 2 pm. Needed to make a stop in Blue Earth. Shouldn’t take long.

Margaret was skeptical. Even though the interstate was open, the snowplows were working hard, and traffic would be slow as cold molasses. Truckers were making up for lost deadlines, and dads were breaking speed laws to get to family functions.

(The collective armed forces of most of the countries on the planet would have given their equivalent of a dragon’s horde to get their hands on the magical technology that shielded a Hunter’s vehicle from law enforcement radar.)

\-----

Bobby showed up at 1 pm. Walked into the crowded motel lobby in his usual winter garb: billed winter cap with ear flaps, canvas coat over heavy wool sweater and flannel shirt, lined jeans, and sturdy work boots–just like 20 other men and women in the room. Part of that fraternity who get the job done in rural America, whether it be planting corn, milking cows, driving trucks, building highways, or sending hell-born monsters back to their homeland.

He was carrying two bulging shopping bags, marked with the logo of the biggest grocery store in Sioux Falls. Waited his turn and stepped up to the counter, wanted to do Mrs. Burkee the courtesy of saying hello first, respecting the house rules, when he was hit by a Sammy-shaped ball of energy. Dropped the bags. The boy was laughing and talking a mile-a-minute about…well…about everything. Looked over to see Dean, smiling to bust.

Reached out to shake his hand past Sammy, who was hugging him fiercely, when Dean pitched forwarded and joined the hug. The old hunter was overcome with how good it felt to hold the two boys in his arms. Maybe it was his imagination, but lordy, how they had grown in the few weeks since he had seen them at the salvage yard.

A tall, pretty woman with curly hair grinned at him from behind the check-in counter.

“Take it you know my favorite boys? You must be Uncle Bobby…welcome!”


	8. Christmas Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby receives the best gift: Seeing his happy boys

The boys dragged Bobby down the hall to their room. Made him close his eyes before they opened the door. Margaret resisted the urge to follow. Bobby might not be their _real_ uncle, but it was obvious that he was _real_ family, and they needed time together.

Bobby was awestruck by the decorations. Made them explain the placement of every light, every piece of felt, every ornament, every sigil. Claimed it was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, and both boys beamed. For once Dean did not object to something he was involved with being called “pretty”.

The boys sat him down at the little table, which was now clear of the catalogs and scraps of paper and art supplies and books, and offered him decorated shortbread cookies and a glass of milk. Took his cap and coat and hung them up on the wooden coat rack near the door. Dean ran off to get him a BIG cup of coffee from the diner and to pick up their lunch, which Sammy reassured him was the _best food in the world_. Came back carrying a heavy tray with roast beef sandwiches and cups of hot tomato soup and small bowls of cole slaw and potato salad. And pecan pie. A pitcher of milk. And that big cup of coffee.

The boys had captured a couple of extra chairs from the diner, with Bill's permission. Set the table like it was a family dinner.

Bobby didn’t comment regarding Dean’s eating vegetables–without complaint. How he served the food and made sure Sammy and Bobby had the right silverware and a napkin, just like Margaret had done for them when they first came to the motel.

Real cream for his coffee. The Burkees did not skimp on the small luxuries when it came to their guests. Name-brand soap in the bathrooms. Nice stuff, not the generic pink bars that smell like old grandmas. Good towels. And quality ingredients in the diner food.

\-----

They settled in for some serious Hunter talk. Sammy mostly listened, but asked a question once in a while, and Bobby answered him as he would an adult.

No recent word from John, but Bobby was sure he was okay. Some nasties come out only at the winter and summer Solstices, and their father probably had partnered with Hunters up in the Kabetogama State Forest for a big case.

Bobby knew more, but wasn’t saying. Serious business involving some First Nation shamans from across the Canadian border. As a rule, monsters don’t respect geopolitical boundaries, but it is interesting how many states and provinces follow the natural ley lines formed by rivers, valleys, and mountain passes, where the deepest geological secrets of the earth are pushed out into the light by earthquakes and massive floods, revealing canyons and ancient volcanoes and the journey of glaciers.

Dean showed Bobby the paper ornaments embedded with the Shield of David symbols. The old Hunter agreed they were powerful magic. When Pastor Jim came back from the Holy Land, the old Hunter bet the good man would like a couple for his collection. And Bobby would keep the rest for the boys.

When they moved into the bunker in Lebanon, Nebraska years later, those decorations were one of the first things they retrieved from the safely warded locker in Sioux Falls.

Bobby agreed to talk to the Burkees about a fair trade for a dozen of them; he knew they would not take money, but he already figured how he would frame the request: exchanging gifts.

Gifts. Yes, he brought what he and Dean had discussed. Plus, there were some surprises. He pulled wrapped presents from the bags. The boys squealed and yelped. Most of them had the boys’ names on them: from Bobby and Rufus and Ellen and Pastor Jim.

And John.

Earlier in the year Bobby and John had exchanged strong words about the boys. About birthdays and holidays. They came to an agreement. No more missed celebrations. And he, Bobby, planned to step in if John chose not to.

It was not a pleasant discussion.  
  
“And don’t tell me you forget, you bastard,” Bobby had yelled, when the argument had gotten heated, and the two Hunters had backed off instinctually to different corners of Bobby’s cluttered study, out of arm’s reach. Out of mutual harm’s way.

Bobby broke first.

“You choose to pretend they aren’t still boys. Children.”

Bobby yelled, spitting out each word like he was cursing a blade before a fight with a demon.

“You choose to forget holidays and birthdays. So they don’t feel loved. Don’t have fun. Kid’s fun. I know you’re afraid for them, but this ain’t it. This is mean. You choose to be mean and angry. Maybe to toughen them up when all they have left is you. And the next case.

“You need to know, you bastard, that I would adopt those two in a heartbeat and take them away from you if I could. But they have such good hearts. They love you.

"Hell, you don’t deserve them.”

Before they killed each other or worse, John agreed that Bobby could buy presents for the boys and pretend they were from John. Of course, eventually the boys found out, and they loved Bobby even more for the well-intended deceptions.

\-----

It already was decided that Bobby and the boys were staying in Harmony through Christmas Day. Devoted to the task at hand, a very serious and focused Sammy stripped the second twin bed and made it up for Bobby, with clean sheets and a pile of pillows, hard to soft, and two buttery plush blankets. Dean and Bobby watched, amused, letting the little boy struggle, but not daring to offer any help.

As usual, even though it was a treat to have two beds in their room, the boys shared one, partly for comfort and partly in hopes that their father would surprise them in the middle of the night and need a place to rest. But for now, it was “Bobby’s bed”.

They piled the gifts around the small tree in the corner, including the ones labeled for John and Bobby in Dean and Sam’s neat block printing. And two of the gifts Bobby pulled out of his bag had Bill Burkee and Margaret Burkee’s names on them.

Sammy and Dean had never seen such Christmas richness outside of corny movies and tv shows.

\-----

Bobby took a long hot shower and, much to the boys’ astonishment, shaved and put on a clean khaki shirt. Looked younger by ten years. Seemed to have lost his grump on the road.

The rest of the day was spent walking around outside as Dean and Sam showed Bobby the town, and they browsed the packed stores on Main Street amidst crowds of last-minute shoppers. The Amish officially were forbidden by their religion to have much to do with Supernatural craftwork, which was dismissed as superstition and paganism. But they made beautiful wooden lidded boxes that could be carved with wards and blessed by Pastor Jim. Always could use a couple of extra curse boxes imbued with the holiness of the maker.

The brothers took him by the playground. When some of the bigger boys and girls yelled, “Hey, Winchesters, come play,” Bobby thought the brothers were going to bust with pride. A few of the kids came over to say hello, as fearless as puppies, and shook Bobby’s hand, then ran back to build yet another snow fort in the bright winter sunshine.

“Wanna go with your friends?” asked Bobby. Dean looked eager, then wistful, then sad. Sammy shook his head and looked down at his boots. Both boys knew that they would be leaving soon. Not so good to get attached.

They walked back to the Good Faith Diner, where the Burkees were neck deep in the Christmas Eve rush. Bobby had been a short-order cook when he first worked at the salvage yard, before he married Karen, and he offered his services to Bill. A way to thank them for their kindness with Dean and Sammy.

Bobby turned out to have a knack for the 24-hour breakfast menu, popular with customers even on Christmas Eve.

He tied aprons around the boys and had them bus tables. After a few minutes Sammy ran up to Bill, a ten-dollar bill in his hand.

“Mr. Burkee, the ladies at that table want to give me money. They say I am _cute_.”

He said it like it was a swear word and made a face.

“Well, that’s your tip for working hard,” said Bill. “When you and Dean are finished, we will put half the money in a jar for the regulars to split and you can keep the rest.”  
  
He knew the customers would be extra generous on Christmas, particularly the truckers and state law enforcement officers far from their families.  
  
“We can keep the money, De,” shouted Sammy, and blushed when diner customers laughed and applauded.

Best Christmas Eve ever.

Bobby and the boys went back to the room, exhausted and happy. The Burkees were invited to see the unveiling of the _Wish Book_ poster the next day and, it was hinted that a nice surprise waited both of them. In turn, the old Hunter and the brothers were asked to share an early private Christmas dinner with the Burkees, their children, and Oscar Lund, the accountant. Bring their presents and everything could be opened together. More fun in a group. Would still give Bobby plenty of time to drive the brothers back with him to Sioux Falls.

John had called Bobby; he would meet them at the salvage yard…maybe within the week. Maybe. Never asked after the boys.


	9. Christmas Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wish Book is revealed. The boys done good.

Somewhere in Israel, December 23, 1992

_“Hey Pastor, Bobby Singer here. You doing okay?”_

_“Yes, and always good to hear from you. Hoping you are well this holiday season, my dear friend. What can I do for you?”_

_"Well, this ain’t an end-of-the-world kind of request.”_

_“Thank God for that._   _A welcome change from our usual conversations._ ”  
_  
“Yep. Okay, there’s this nice couple over in Harmony, the Burkees. Runs that motel and diner, Good Faith, for sick folk and their families who need to spend time at Mayo. They’ve been special to Sammy and Dean while John’s dealing with some bad dudes up by the Canadian border. Humans trying to breed_ _Wendigoag_ [plural of Wendigo, according to some authorities] _. Some new level of idjit behavior. Backfired, yeah, big surprise. No one left to rescue, but a lot of messy clean up. He’s working with some First Nation Adepts.”_

 _"May God protect us from fools. I doubt they had the saving grace of being well-intended. I will ask for God's Mercy on their souls. even though I suspect they chose a bad path years ago. Hmmm, Know a little about Good Faith. Spoke at one of the churches in Harmony a few years ago. Guest sermon for Easter on forgiveness and love. Nice town."_  
  
“Yep. So, Pastor, I’m gonna drive out and see the boys tomorrow. Stay and celebrate Christmas, then take them back to Sioux Falls. Don’t know how long John’s going to be, and he might catch another case. But glad to have them. Always.  
  
“So, I was wondering. Might you have something I could pick up on my way over to Harmony? Maybe something pretty for the wife. Something for the husband. They’re devout and don’t know if they know anything about the Supernatural, outside of what they read in the Bible. Good people. She’s Irish-American, by the way. Second generation, according to the boys, who seem to know everything about them.”

There was a pause. Bobby was impressed that Pastor Jim’s mojo extended to static-free international cell phone calls. Then, he would swear later that he could hear the good man smile.

_“Know just the things. I will tell Martha you’re coming. You still have the key to the back room? So, on the first shelf to the right is a large oak jewelry box. Covered with Celtic knots. Safe-warded with a lock and blessings, just to keep the average thief away. The key is…”_

\-----

Dean and Sammy had hung the finished _Wish Book_ poster on the wall between the twin beds and covered it with a clean sheet they borrowed from housekeeping. They had moved the shade on the bedside lamp so that it would spotlight the images. Margaret, Bill, and Bobby watched with interest.

Sammy pulled the edge of the sheet so it fell to the side. He tiptoed away.

What the adults saw was a small masterpiece. A lot to take in.

The brothers had painted the cardboard in a festive red and green checkerboard pattern, with white lines between the squares. But, the background barely peeked out from a collage of photos and drawings, pieced together like a crazy quilt.

They had divided the cardboard into four tiers by gluing twisted strings of tinsel to the board to create borders. Each section was labeled with names blocked out in different colored glitter. Sam and Dean. Bobby and John. Mr. and Mrs. Burkee. And…and this was a surprise: The Children and The Hunters.

“May I?” Margaret asked.

Dean nodded. Margaret stepped forward and adjusted the light on the table between the beds, so she could see the details clearly. Bobby and Bill stood on either side of her. All three adults stared in wonder.

The boys had decided that they would fill in each other’s wish book. Didn't expect anything else.

Sammy knew Dean would keep the money from Bobby and their tips for emergencies. Couldn’t be wasted on presents. Could mean missed meals on the road with John if they spent it on fun today.

They made “real” presents for Bill and Margaret, which were wrapped under their little tree, and after a short meeting with Bill, had figured out a way to trade their time helping out at the motel and diner for something special for Bobby and Pastor Jim. Also wrapped and labeled.

So, they each cut and pasted photos from the catalog and drew their wishes for their brother, taking turns at the table. Respected each other’s privacy. Even Dean didn’t peek.

\-----

Dean knew that John was lying to himself and his sons about their future. The drunken, regretful promises that their father made to them no longer held any meaning.

Someday this will be finished, he would say. We will catch and kill the thing that killed your mother, he would say. We will settle down. Be a real family again.

So Dean clipped and drew images of what could never be. No limits to what he wished for Sammy. Didn’t matter.

Sammy still believed. His dreams still were possible. Ironically, he also set no limits for what he wished for Dean. Anything was possible.

When it came to the rest of the poster, they worked together, arguing about which images would work the best within the limits of the size of the cardboard. Sammy was the more sophisticated of the two brothers. He came up with the idea of creating “drafts” of their work, meaning placing images on the poster without gluing them down. Finding better photos and images to replace first choices, and moving them into better positions, until they were both satisfied. Dean huffed and puffed, as older brothers tend to do, but he respected his younger brother’s smarts. As usual, they complemented each other’s skills.

\-----

Dean looked resigned, which was his way of protecting himself from feeling that he had failed, but Sammy was quivering. Eager for Margaret and the men to see what they had made. _The Winchester Wish Book._

Also, eager for Dean to see what he had created for his beloved older brother. Hoping Dean would like it. And more than curious about what Dean had created for him.

The first thing Margaret noticed was the differences in the drawings. Sammy’s were more delicate, with more details, and Dean’s were broad-stroked, with stronger colors. Both showed talent.

She started at the top, where Sam (Sammy insisted) and Dean had created fantasy gifts for each other.

The tears started to flow almost immediately.

Dean’s square held a lovely portrait of a beautiful blonde woman with flowing locks. Behind her was a blue house with a white picket fence around a front yard. A man stood next to her, holding a football in one hand and his arm around the woman with the other. Margaret recognized John, except he was younger. And happy. Both were smiling and looking out from the picture as if they were welcoming someone.

Dean started to shake, and Bobby put his arms around the boy and cuddled him close.

Inside the fence, which had been cut out of a separate piece of cardboard, painted white, and then glued into place over the yard, were photos of toys, cut from the catalog. A bike, a pile of sports equipment, and a table. Covered with a hand-drawn pile of pies.

“Sammy…” Dean stammered. He escaped Bobby’s comforting arms and went to his brother. Drew him into a long hug.

“Wonderful,” the young Hunter said. “Best present ever.”

The other side of the square was Dean’s idea of the perfect Sammy research library. Several times their father brought the brothers with him to universities when John needed to talk to a scholar in anthropology or linguistics or ancient religions. He would park the boys in a corner of some library, knowing they would be good, and knowing that Sammy would kill his brother if his behavior caused them to be kicked out. He would slip a student worker some money to lie that the boys were his younger brothers, with promise of more when he returned.

So Dean built a library based on those visits, with shelves disappearing into the sky. A likeness of Sammy sat a table piled with books. He wore a cap and gown, the memory of which Dean borrowed from the movie _Good-bye, Mr. Chips,_ which played every late night for a week on a local small-town television station because of the eccentricities of the program director, an expat Brit. And at Sammy Scholar’s feet, snipped from the section of the catalog devoted to pet supplies, were a platoon of dogs arranged in a collage. Boxers and coonhounds and labs and setters and spaniels and shepherds and collies. Hunting dogs and working dogs and hounds. Big dogs with pretty coats and intelligent faces.

“Wow,” said Sammy. Speechless. So used to Dean teasing him, but here was proof that he really listened. Stretched tall and managed to kiss his big brother on the cheek. Dean blushed, but did not pull back, and smiled in return.

Bobby’s wish book had the biggest, fanciest truck they could find in local newspaper ads, placed in the middle of the biggest, fanciest kitchen pieced together, Frankenstein-style, from a dozen sections of the catalog. Bobby gulped and nodded.

“You think I need another truck?” he asked. But they could tell he was pleased.

John. Another image of John, this time standing in a giant garage, with luxury cars lined up and with every auto tool imaginable hanging from the walls.

“You boys nailed it. This always was his dream,” said Bobby, clearing his throat and wiping his eyes.

When it came to the Burkees, both of the good people were silent, staring in disbelief at what the boys had wrought.

If there was anything the boys knew well, it was the Lore of a dozen civilizations and a hundred countries. Stories told on late nights with John and Pastor Jim and Bobby swapping tales, while the boys nestled under a pile of blankets and pillows, sleepy from a good meal. Bobby and Pastor Jim’s collections of books. With pictures. Sitting in a booth at a roadhouse, snacking on a plate of fries, listening to Hunters relate their latest failures and victories, uncensored.

From the point of view of the boys, the Burkees were the richest people they had ever met. What could they possibly want that they didn’t already have? Love and family and good food and respect. They helped people. What more could there be?

So, the young Winchesters did what they were raised to do: Research the Lore.

The Big Reveal: They transformed the two good Methodists into pagan Gods.

Margaret became Brigid, Irish Goddess of healing, poetry and wisdom. Dressed in royal robes of glorious red and gold, wearing a St. Brigid’s cross. Surrounded by farm animals and crops. She wore a crown of flowers in her short brown curly hair, which was highlighted in red and gold like her robes.

And unflappable Bill gasped, and Margaret tried to contain her laughter, when they realized that Swedish-American Bill had been transformed into Thor. Thor the Protector. Thor the Healer. With shoulder length blond hair like in the comic books. Hunting Monsters. Saving People. Holding a baseball bat inscribed with runes. Standing surrounded by the iconic ivy walls of Wrigley Field, home of Bill’s beloved Chicago Cubs.

(When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, Sam asked Castiel if Heaven had cable. Castiel replied, with a straight face, that if souls could vote, Ernie Banks would have been made an Archangel years ago. Sam took that as a “yes”.)

The boys were not sure of the responses. So, Dean started babbling, explaining the Lore behind the images in that earnest way young people explain things to adults. He held Sammy in his arms, his face buried in his older brother’s chest, to shield him from ridicule.

Bobby spoke first.

“You idjits did a great job, you did. Mr. and Mrs. Burkee, we know you are good Christians, but before Christ there was Brigid and Thor, protecting their people.”

Margaret immediately responded.

“My grandmother prayed to St. Brigid when I was growing up. She would be honored to see me portrayed in her likeness. Thank you. I will cherish this forever.”

Bill said nothing, but he had a big grin on his face. Eyes lingered on the Cubs logo on Thor’s breastplate.

“This is…just the best. The best.

“Maggie, we need to frame our part, if that’s okay with you boys. Heck, can we have the whole thing? Something to remember you both by?”

And then, through tears and sniffles and laughter, attention turned to the bottom tier of images, The Children and The Hunters.

(Remember, at the point, the Burkees had no idea what the brothers meant by Hunters.)

It was a panorama of children playing in a mountain valley. Dean’s broad, bright strokes filled in the background. The peaks cupped the valley like giant hands, protecting the meadows and forests below.

The children were dancing. Tiny stick figures, just enough to see the color of their skirts and jeans and shirts. Boys and girls dressed in bright colors, arms up, hair flying.

Around them were grown men and women, dressed in emblematic plaid and flannel, suggested with a few swipes of pencil and crayon. Arms up, dancing.

In the middle of the field of dancers was a cage. The bars were outlined in silver glitter. Inside there were grey forms with red glittery eyes and yellow fangs and horns, swirled together.

Margaret and Bill were puzzled. They stood, silently, in respect for an image that obviously meant a lot to the boys.

They couple turned as one and looked at Bobby, the easy synchronization of the long-married and partnered.

 _Later,_ Bobby mouthed, and the Burkees nodded.

It was occurring to the boys that the Burkees didn’t understand the symbolism, but more importantly, didn’t know what or who Hunters were.

Dean and Sam both were good at thinking on their feet, after years of lying to nosy adults about the funny smells coming from their motel room and when they last ate and when John was expected back.

Sammy the Scholar took the lead, imitating the professors that lectured on public television at 3 am. He moved in front of the adults and began to gesture.

Dean hung back, as he did when Sammy took out the bully, letting his brother be the center of attention.  
  
“Okay, these are the kids who come to Good Faith. Maybe they are here with their families because they are sick. Or someone else is sick. What makes them sick are the monsters. All the children fight the monsters, and in this picture, they won. The monsters are in this silver cage. Silver is great to protect against monsters. You can kill many monsters with silver, and we figured that a cage made of silver could hold many monsters.”

(Damn, these boys are smart, thought Bobby. Gotta run this by Pastor Jim when he gets back from the Holy Land. And that bastard John, if he ever shows up again. That’s why we need children in the world, to look at old problems with fresh eyes.)

“Okay, the adults are called Hunters,” says Sammy.

“Hunters spend their lives hunting and killing monsters to protect people. They are dancing and happy because all of the monsters are now locked up in a cage, and it is the end of the monsters.

“So now, everyone is safe and happy. The children can play, and the Hunters don’t have to hunt anymore.”  
  
The Burkees were awestruck, turning to look at Dean, who was beaming, and then back to Sammy, who was standing next to the poster board, awaiting the verdict from the adults. The couple knew that something else was going on, something bigger than a sweet, childlike fantasy. They wondered if there were more monsters in the world than they knew of, more than cancer and hunger, pain and grief and hopelessness.

Bobby grabbed Dean first, gave the boy a bone-crushing hug, and kissed the top of his head. Dean buried his nose in Bobby’s garish Christmas sweater, an ancient holiday gift knit by his late wife that had been pulled out of storage and brought along for the occasion. It smelled of sandalwood and spice from the chest where it had laid for years.

Then he waved Sammy over. Couldn’t speak, but pulled the smaller boy to him.

Peace enveloped the two young Hunters and the man who loved them.

Best _Wish Book_ ever.


	10. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What are friends for?

The revealing of the _Winchester Wish Book_ occurred mid-morning, giving Bill and Margaret plenty of time to return to their remaining diner and motel duties before dinnertime Their three grown children, Grace, Joy, and Seth, had arrived late the night before, flying and/or driving in, and were involved in creating the family Christmas meal. After hearing the story of the Winchesters and Uncle Bobby, they were more than happy to invite the trio to join them for dinner and the exchange of presents afterwards.

Where were the rest of the Burkee and Quinn families? Bill’s parents and older sister had moved to what his father Nils called “their heavenly reward” in South Carolina. They all had long since agreed that they would celebrate Minnesota Christmas sensibly in July at the same time as the 4th. The Quinns, still in Iowa, decided to wait out the storm and drive up from Dubuque in a couple of weeks over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, cheerfully looking forward to a less hectic holiday visit

It also was decided to leave the decorations up in the WInchesters' room until it was time to pack up and leave after the presents were exchanged in the early evening. (The timing had evolved based on what had worked out the best over the years while running the motel and diner during the holiday season.) Bobby took a couple of rolls of photos and promised to send the Burkees a set when he got them developed back in Sioux Falls.

The boys were thrilled that the Burkees were going to keep the _Wish Book_ poster. After the photo session, they readied the board for transport.

Bill had just the things to protect the artifact: the same materials used to weatherproof the wood-framed windows of old houses. The boys carefully covered the front of the poster with an overlapping sheet of thin, transparent plastic, the kind used to cover drafty single-paned windows. They folded the plastic’s edges as if they were making hospital corners on the bed, tucked the excess plastic around the backside of the board, and taped everything down. Then, with Bobby’s help, they taped strips of thin wood, the kind used to tack window sheeting in place around a window frame, in a grid pattern on the back of the _Wish Book_ poster, to reinforce the cardboard and prevent it from bending.

Dean removed the iron and silver sigils from the room and slid them into his duffel. Both boys, with utmost care, took down the pretty ornaments, those fancy ones with the Shield of David worked into the design, and placed them in their own separate box. Sam’s job was to carry them; he took that as a sacred trust.

Bobby and the boys then carefully balanced the presents and the poster board on a luggage cart. They pushed it out of the motel room, locking the room up behind them. Then, with Sam leading the way, the precious box held tight in two hands, Bobby and Dean pushed and pulled the cart across the big parking lot and into front yard of the Burkee’s home. They were welcomed by the younger Burkees, who shared their parents’ kind natures and good looks.

The presents were transferred into the house. Bobby was invited in to watch football and sip some decent Irish whiskey with the three young adults while the Winchester brothers went out to join their new friends for one more play session.

\-----

Grace Burkee was a little girl when CPA Oscar Lund showed up to save the motel and himself. She fell in the love with the quiet man who always was polite to her and treated her with respect. She gave him the unconditional love of a daughter; he taught her the magic of numbers. She, not surprisingly, was a brilliant accounting major at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and an enthusiast for any winter sport. Was grateful that tax season did not fall in December.

Joy, the middle child, lived up to her name, a bright soul full of laughter. Popular in school and a natural born leader, the family guessed a career in law and politics. But growing up she had been deeply influenced by the stories of the families that stayed at Good Faith; she had paid attention while she waited on tables and changed linens. She was matter-of-fact when she announced she was planning to attend pre-med and medical school at Northwestern University in Chicago, become a pediatrician, and then find a place where she could make a difference. She was 16 when she made this speech at breakfast during a meeting at the diner regarding plans for a family vacation. She was currently pre-med and already scoping out potential residency programs for future consideration.

Seth, the dreamy-eyed youngest, loved the visual arts–painting, print-making, typography and graphic design, drawing–as well as any craft. After high school he had moved to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, an arts colony in an idyllic corner of southwestern Wisconsin near the Mississippi River, and landed a job in a small, trendy coffeehouse where he wowed the owners with his knowledge of the restaurant business. He was taking technical classes in ceramics and jewelry-making at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and having dinner with his Quinn grandparents once a week in nearby Dubuque. He decided that he could make salable pins and cups while supporting his less commercial endeavors.

Bill and Margaret were pleased their children were kind, honest, and hard-working, decent humans first and foremost. Their diverse talents were gravy. Were they disappointed their dreams lead them away from Harmony? The couple missed seeing them every day, but they knew their children were happy and productive; nothing else mattered as much.

Bobby enjoyed watching the football game–and sipping the very good whiskey–while the siblings gossiped and argued everything and finished the meal’s prep: the familiar shared work of peeling potatoes, slicing apples, shredding cheese, cutting up vegetables for salad, mixing dressing, and keeping track of rolls and pies, waiting to be slipped into the oversized stove. Bill and Margaret would be coming back to the house around 4 pm, bringing the turkey and ham from the giant diner oven.

The goal being to create enough leftovers to send back to school with their offspring to feed them for days.

\-----

It was a beautiful afternoon with bright sunshine and high fluffy clouds. Dean and Sam returned to the playground with two baskets of almond cookies for the police and firefighters on duty as well as a bag for the children. (Spoil their appetites? Really?)

One more game of Touch Football. One more game of Keep Away. One more game of Freeze Tag. Then, the children surrounded them, and one of the girls, a bit older than Dean, stepped forward with a large, heavy plastic shopping bag, the kind with reinforced handles.

“You’re really nice,” she said. “We all think so.”

She handed Sammy the bag. He sat it on a dry patch of sidewalk and opened the top, mystified.

The children had conspired while Sammy and Dean were working at the restaurant the day before and presenting their Wish Book dream board in the morning. Nothing, in childhood currency, before the age of smart phones and apps, was more valuable to kids travelling away from home than comic books. You bought them, sold them, traded them, and read them until the covers frayed. Pretty much all of the kids had a stockpile, and they all contributed.

Dozens of classic comics. Dozens, mostly new.

Dean and Sammy felt like they had been gifted a chest of gold from King Solomon’s Mines.

Sammy was stunned and although he was smiling, his face was wet with tears.

Dean, with a fierce look on his face, put an arm around his brother, and formally, like Pastor Jim giving a sermon, spoke for both of them.

“You…you…need anything? You get in trouble? You don’t know what to do? You call my Uncle Bobby. Bobby Singer at Singer’s Salvage in Sioux Falls. He’ll always know where to find me and Sammy. Forever.”

The young Hunter squared his shoulders.

“That’s what we do. Sammy and me, we’re Winchesters.”

“This is the best, the best,” he said, pointing to the bag.

“We’ll never forget you.”

The assembled children stumbled forward, hugging each other and the brothers, slapping them on the shoulders. The girl who had given Sammy the bag leaned in and kissed Dean on the cheek. No one laughed. He felt like he had been knighted.

They waved good-bye and trudged slowly back to the Burkee’s house.

Ten years later in Sioux City, Iowa, one of the little boys from that day had morphed into a desperate high school junior, being bullied to the point of no return. One day, he remembered the fierce speech on the playground and found Singer Salvage, Sioux Falls, in a phone book in the public library.

(Those were the days when most public libraries had physical collections of phone books of the bigger towns in their state and even across the United State. Yes, will wonders never cease.)

Called the number and winced at the gruff voice that answered. Stammered out, in barely coherent sentences, that he needed to speak to Dean. Bobby figured it out pretty quick, ask some questions, read between the lines, got a phone number, and said Dean would call.

Two days later, a black monster of a car peeled into the parking lot of the high school, just as classes was getting out. Out strode Dean, looking like the Wrath of God, or more accurately, the Sword of Michael. (At least one girl swooned.) He accosted several students, searching for his old friend by name.

In front of a hundred kids, gave the boy a big hug, called him cousin, loudly, then slapped him on the back, and whispered a question in his ear. Hands shaking, the younger boy pointed.

Dean walked over to the small group of boys and girls waiting for their victim to walk by. They were lounging on the grass by the entrance to the parking lot. All they had in common with each other was an innate streak of meanness.

Dean was in the middle of a hunt near Seward, Nebraska, and did not have time for the Velvet Glove approach…just the typical Dean Winchester _shoot now and try to raise bail later_ action mode.

The ringleader, a paunchy second-string defensive lineman on the school’s football team, rose to his feet, taking in the broad shoulders and the muscular build of the young man moving towards him. Before he could speak, Dean rushed him, had him on the ground, and was holding a knife to his throat.

“Here’s the deal, Refrigerator,” said Dean, mocking him with the name of a former football behemoth.

“Touch my cousin, call my cousin and hang up on him, send my cousin anonymous letters, mess with his locker or his food tray or his books or his pencil case or his coat or anything he owns or touches, spread rumors about my cousin, write my cousin’s name on the bathroom wall, call him names, bother him or hurt him physically or emotionally, or anyone else, for that matter, in this whole, frigging town, you son of a bitch, and I come back. I will take this knife and leave town with something you find very precious.

“And then I go after the rest of you lowlifes,” he said, waving the knife in their general vicinity.

Except they all seemed to have vanished into thin air.

“I have a nest of vampires to take out. I plan to cut off their heads with a machete. You are disrupting my workflow.”

He took the knife from the boy’s throat, stood up, and replaced the knife with his boot.

Dean seemed to realize for the first time that a crowd was gathering. He looked around, and the students began to applaud.

He motioned to the slack-jawed former victim.

“Let me take you home, cousin. Wanna say hi to Aunty,” he said.

A few minutes after the Impala roared off, the police arrived. Curiously, despite the crowd of witnesses, no one saw or heard anything that could corroborate the football player’s fantastic story regarding the vampire slayer with the knife.

Sort of became a legend, and scared straight more than one prospective bully.

\-----

Back at the Burkee’s house, dinner was almost ready. Seth had spent a few minutes studying the _Wish List_ poster and pounced on the boys as they came in and were kicking off their snow-covered boots and hanging up their coats. Filled with genuine and specific praise for their images and design. Asked intelligent questions. Wanted to know in particular how they knew so much about the mythology of Ireland and the Nordic countries, how they managed the accuracy with which they decorated Brigid’s robes and drew the runes on Thor’s hammer?

Margaret intervened and told the boys to wash up. Took Seth aside and told him to tread gently. He apologized. Knew better.

“Mom, it’s just…they are so talented.”


	11. Presents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making memories

Oscar entered the house without knocking, the prerogative of family. Grace trapped him in a hug. She now was taller than her mentor; kissed him on the forehead. She dragged him off to a corner, and they began a long, whispered, incomprehensible discussion of current trends in tax law, inflation, and futures trading.

As Dean and Sam told the story for years, they were speaking in Enochian. Bobby concurred.

The meal? It was perfect.

Seth sat between the boys, eager to talk about their art and the shared roots of European mythology. Joy, who still had the looks and bubbly personality of a head high school cheerleader, flirted shameless with Bobby and Dean. Getting the older man to blush turned out to be easy. But they also chatted about emergency medicine and some of her tougher cases when she discovered Bobby did not wince at shoptalk over meals.

Grace sat between Oscar and Sammy. She was intrigued by what she had heard about the young genius, so she threw out a question regarding analytical geometry. His response was to point to an invisible set of numbers in the air in front of him, trace formulas with his finger as if drawing at a blackboard, and come up with a plausible answer. Oscar and Grace exchanged glances, and pretty much monopolized the boy for most of the rest of the meal, testing his knowledge in a dozen subjects.

Sort of like watching a tennis match. Sammy returned every serve.

Meanwhile, dozens of dishes circulated around the table. Dean, out of politeness, accepted that he would have to eat the vegetables, not just push them around his plate with a fork, and so he discovered why corn tasted better with a touch of garlic and mashed potatoes tasted better with Wisconsin cheddar and peas tasted better with a whisper of mint and everything tasted better with butter and cream.

As soon as the family saw a dent in the mounds of food on the plates of their guests, another platter of turkey or ham or stuffing or cranberry sauce circulated, along with rolls and butter and gravy.

During the meal, Bill and Margaret and the girls took turns getting up to start packing the leftovers for transport. A picnic basket, a prize from a Bingo game, was going to go home with Bobby and the boys. Plastic containers­–Margaret was the Queen of Recycling­–were filled with generous portions of everything from the table; the leftovers never felt like leftovers.  
  
Seth and Grace also would be packing their own collection of leftovers in hampers for the drive back. Joy had a special box to take with her as luggage on the flight down to Chicago.

Everyone took their dishes to the kitchen, and with quick efficiency, plates were scraped and rinsed and stuffed in the dishwasher. Didn’t feel like work. To the boys, and Bobby, felt like a privilege to be helping clean up after dinner in the midst of such happiness. The remaining serving dishes were covered with clean towels until after the presents were exchanged, so that the packing could be completed.

The party was moved to the living room. Under a huge tree that looked liked it had been harvested from a fairy tale forest, the presents were piled. A sideboard held a frosted chocolate cake, at least four pies, and cups for coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. The _Wish Book_ poster was propped up against the wall as a backdrop for the goodies.  
  
Everyone spread out on chairs and couches around a wooden coffee table, and Seth and his sisters retrieved the presents from the tree, a few at a time.

The first round of desserts meant squeezing a sliver of everything on each plate.

“Otherwise, how can you decide what to have for seconds?” said Grace, always the voice of rationality.

Everyone took turns opening presents between even more eating. Most of the Burkee family gifts were modest and handmade; all had personal meaning.

For their children, there were hand-knit scarves and mittens and sweaters, the kind that invoked envy from their friends at school and work. For their father and mother, books. Fancy hand cream and lotion for hardworking Margaret and a box of exotic spices for Bill the cook.

Oscar, as was his custom, dug into his never-mentioned and rarely touched wealth, leftover from his CFO days. Most of it was held in trust for the education of the next generation of Burkees. But at Christmas and birthdays he would buy everyone something very very nice. Said they were investment gifts.

For the Burkee children, it was pens this season, the kind people sign treaties with, with a fancy bottle of ink and a felt-lined box for display. For that really important job interview. For his dear friends, Bill and Margaret, a certificate for a custom suit and shirts and a fitting for Bill up in Minneapolis, and a cashmere coat for Margaret.

“For bank meetings and graduations and weddings. Will turn heads in Chicago and the Twin Cities. And Mineral Point,” he said, to applause.

For Oscar, a handmade quilt, worked on in secret during the year. All three children were quick with a needle. Seth designed it, and he and his sisters each had sections to sew and assemble during the year. The theme was country life, portrayed in images cut from a variety of patterned cloth.

Bill and Margaret gave him a pair of cufflinks that had belonged to Bill’s grandfather, heavy and ornate from the 19th century.

Joy gave everyone their own copies of books on advanced first aid and home health. Seth designed a pin that resembled the old-fashioned logo of Good Faith and crafted versions for each member of the family. Rational Grace had found a lovely illustrated book of Psalms and had ordered and wrapped multiple copies.

Bobby’s gift from the Burkee family was a bottle of Door County cherry wine, a regional treat from Wisconsin. Good with fish and corn on the cob, said Bill. Something for summer. Something to celebrate with friends. The boys received cold-weather mittens and hats. (Always extras in the knitting basket for guests.)

Bobby was prepared and handed out silver bullets from his arsenal as a gift from him and the boys. For good luck, he said. Seth thought his was beautiful. Grace was impressed with the weight, as was Oscar. Joy, the budding doctor, looked at hers thoughtfully as she balanced it in the palm of her hand.

“Now,” said the old Hunter. “These are real bullets. Have real magic in them. Keep them safe.”

The family laughed. Sammy and Dean did not say a word.

Next came the presents for and from the boys.

The three Burkee children had dug into their personal stores. Seth had assembled a collection of paintbrushes, tubes of unopened watercolors, and a spectrum of fancy drawing pencils, complete with sharpeners, plus a pad of drawing paper. For Sammy, Grace had pulled a couple of college math textbooks hoarded from her own precocious days in high school from the bookcase in her childhood bedroom. Joy, the popular jock, sacrificed her childhood football with her parent’s blessing for Dean.  
  
(In small-town rural America, it was not uncommon that the same girls who were cheerleaders were also star athletes in pick-up games after school and on weekends.)

The brothers had traded their time helping guests dig out their cars from the storm for home canned goods from the diner’s spacious storeroom. They knew Bobby’s weakness for spiced peaches and homemade sour pickles and Pastor Jim’s love of spaghetti sauce.

For Bill and Margaret they had painted identical fancy, colored sigils on two sheets of white poster board, one for the main exterior entrance of the diner and one for the motel. Everyone passed them around and admired the pretty images. Oscar and Seth examined them for a long time.

Increasingly, it was occurring to the Burkees and their accountant that there were something out of the ordinary about the boys and their uncle.

The presents from the Hunter community were not out of line regarding what a boy in the Heartland might expect. Each brother received a silver penknife from Rufus, the blades hidden in a simple pearl case carved with a Shield of David. Ellen had gifted them both with a leather pouch filled with pretty semi-precious stones, which the boys seemed to set great store in.

Then, came the grand finale.

Bobby had Sammy and Dean closed their eyes and enlisted Seth’s help. When they opened them, Bobby was presenting a beautiful 19th century shotgun to Dean, and Seth was cradling a Bowie knife with a bone handle in front of Sammy, both from the secret locked and warded room in Pastor Jim’s rectory.

It had been remarked over the years that the two boys did not look like brothers: different eye color, skin tone, hair color, and body type. But their reactions often were identical, as were the expressions on their faces when given the very best presents of their young lives.

The shotgun was an authentic, premium 1873 Model Winchester. The real deal. Look it up. The best of the best. One of the reasons that Winchester became a synonym for fear in the monster and black arts community. Packed with salt rounds or customized shells, it was a weapon that served Dean and Sam well for decades. They thought Dean was going to burst into tears as he held it for the first time.

The Bowie knife, which was sheathed in a black leather holster, was named after the elusive James Bowie of the Alamo. A knife designed for close combat, it had its practical uses: skinning game and chopping apart animal carcasses. Watching little Sammy, the sweet-faced scholarly boy, hold the knife with unbridled delight, was disconcerting.

“These are from me, your daddy, and Pastor Jim,” said Bobby. For a few moments, the brothers were oblivious. With care, they laid both weapons on the coffee table and rushed Bobby in unison, forgetting the Burkees and Oscar Lund, while they hugged their surrogate father until he pushed them off, laughing.

They returned to their seats.

Bobby stood up. From near his chair he took two simply wrapped packages and handed one to Margaret and one to Bill.

“You folks have made a big difference in the lives of my boys this Christmas. Much obliged,” said the old Hunter.

“Happened that you heard of Pastor Jim Murphy over by Blue Earth? He travels the world and collects things, sort of like a museum curator. He got this fine gun and knife for Dean and Sammy. And he gave me permission to dig into his warehouse and pull these for you, Mr. and Mrs. Burkee. With his blessing. He is in the Holy Land right now, otherwise he would be taking care of the boys while their father is away. Consider this from all of us.

“The pastor came to our church and gave a beautiful sermon on the power of Love against Evil a few years back. We hear he is a good man,” said Bill.

Then he cleared his throat.  
  
“Maybe, a bit eccentric?”  
  
“Yep, that is the Pastor,” said Bobby, and smiled.

Margaret, with encouragement from her family, opened her present first. It was a necklace of silver and gold chain with a St. Brigid’s cross attached at the end, in a small white cardboard display box. She held it out for the room to see. Family members gasped in unison at its beauty.  
  
At first glance, the design was simple, but to son Seth’s trained eye looks were deceiving. As the box circulated around the room. the young artist went over to his travel bag and pulled out a pair of white cotton archival gloves and a jeweler’s loupe.  
  
“Provenance?” Bobby asked, his question aimed at the brothers.  
  
They were bent over the piece together while Dean held the box. Both sat up straight, taking turns reciting what they saw. Identified it from the 400s. British isles. Influences were post-Roman, and there were traces of other cultures in the workmanship. High-quality gold and silver. Tracings of pre-Christian runes on the back of the cross.

Bobby nodded in approval and smiled. Both boys shone at the praise.

They handed it off to Seth, who, with a nod from Bobby, lifted the necklace from the box and began to examine it in gloved hands, using his magnifying glass. Everyone watched him silently.

“Breathe, son,” said his father, breaking the tension in the room.

Seth shook his head, apparently in disbelief at the craftsmanship.

Bill stood up, took it from his hand sans gloves, and placed it around his wife’s neck. Despite the small size of the clasp, he was able to snap it close without a problem. It seemed to glow in the soft lights from the Christmas tree and the room, settling into her skin, and bringing out the lovely color of her eyes.

“It’s for protection,” said Bobby.  
  
“Sometimes, good people are targets for evil. This will deflect the worst Hell can offer; even Satan himself would think twice before coming after you.”

Margaret stood up, went over to the Hunter, and kissed him on the lips, as she would a beloved member of her family. Bill looked on benevolently. Bobby blushed and stared down at his stocking feet.

The brothers grinned and nudged each other in the ribs.  
  
Then, last was the package in Bill’s hand. It turned out to be a beautiful old box, carved with images of creatures of legend: a dragon, a phoenix, a pegasus, and a winged lion rampant, in what appeared to Seth’s trained eye appeared to be apple wood, light-colored and dense. The top had an intricate design of apple blossoms among fruit at different stages of growth and ripening.

The lid opened on invisible hinges and “popped”, indicating an airtight seal. The entire box was lined with what looked like porcelain or glass, in azure blue. It was filled with herbs, the scent of which quickly escaped into the air of the room. It was not heavy, but it dominated the odors left over from dinner as well as the sweet smell from the Christmas tree.

Imprinted on the interior of the lid on the blue glass was a list of herbs, double-columned, written in an old hand, in silver and gold.

“This box contains an alchemist’s recipe for herbal tea, designed to comfort the sick. No opiates or poisons, mind you. Everyday herbs. But, Pastor Jim and I think the ceremony of making the tea from this pretty box has a soothing effect of the spirit, calming fears and taking away pain.

“It is said to be carved from wood taken from the sacred apple groves of the Blessed Avalon, where the Savior visited.

“Represents the protective spirits of a dozen cultures, including the roots of Christianity.”

The box was passed around, and the lovely smell was duly noted. A hint of apple and cherry, a bite of mint, a taste of sweet woodruff, the sweetness of chamomile, refreshing and soothing. Things green and spring-like, a reminder of rebirth.

“You can use your own ingredients, of course; this recipe is from plants known for centuries for their healing properties.

“To be blunt, it is for the dying, to make their final journey in this world easier. You can create a ceremony with a blessing. It won’t hurt anyone.”

The box was shared around the room, stopping with Joy, who carefully read through the ingredient list. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Reading her mind, Bobby smiled.

“Welcome to take a sample to a lab at the medical school and have it tested," said Bobby.

Which did when she returned to Chicago, asking her father to refrain from using the herbs until she received the results. A mundane tea mix, not much different from what you could buy in the average health food store. Could do no harm, was her verdict.

Of course, Bobby lied. The box was definitely crafted from apple wood from Avalon, but the magic did not hide in the tea, but in the box itself. You could cut up rank weeds from the garden, put them in the box, close the lid, and the next day the mess of leaves and stems would be transformed into something sweet and soothing to the tongue and spirit.

When Angela Potente, the restauranteur, brought her husband back to the motel in order to prepare to take him home to die, he was in a fog of pain and medication. Bill served him the first cup of tea from the box. Within two hours he was lucid and pain-free. Angela threw away the meds and decided to stay in Harmony, and rented a small apartment, where they lived peacefully for two weeks. Angela came over to the diner every morning for a fresh pot of the tea.

One morning, the man smiled as his wife, told her he loved her, and died holding her hand.

Every month Bill mixed up a new batch of the tea. Wisely, by tacit agreement, Margaret, Bill, and Oscar never said a word to anyone, not even their children. But it seemed to do exactly what Bobby promised.

\-----

The truck was packed with food and presents. Bobby promised to call the Burkees when he got back to Sioux Falls. He sort of liked being fussed over, a little. Both boys were falling asleep on their feet, sated with food and love. More hugs and kisses. Dean stumbled out into the cold and climbed up into the cab. Sammy already was conked out. Bill carried him and placed him next to his brother, tucking a blanket around the two of them.

“You are…good people,” said Bobby.

And then they was gone.

\-----  
  
As Chuck’s canon informs us, Love can save the World. A photo of family, a toy soldier caught in a car’s ashtray, initials carved in a table, the inarticulate and broken devotion of a father, the fearlessness of a mother, the soul bond between brothers. The loyalty of friends. And memories.  
  
We will never know how many times, in the worst of times, the images from those few days in Harmony gave Dean and Sam the strength to go on. It is not enough to be against Evil. The people who fight the good battles have to remember, in order to stay human and not turn into monsters themselves, what is the Good they are fighting for.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming along for the ride. I mixed scenes from my childhood with what I hoped was a special gift for our favorite brothers and Bobby.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to the people of Minnesota and particularly the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, who have been fighting monsters for decades, for artistic liberties.
> 
> I travel for a living and often have stayed in small-town motels next to hospitals and clinics, pretty much just like Good Faith. Have witnessed many acts of kindness from the staff as well as among the folks renting rooms. Just good people helping each other.


End file.
